I’ve Been XBoxed

No, I did not die, I just have not had the motivation to blog about anything. I’ve also been consumed by what my significant other (wife) has dubbed “the other woman”. She is referring to the XBox 360 and Halo 3 I borrowed from a friend of mine. I originally intended to borrow it so that I could Forge some multiplayer maps (fellow Halo brethren know what I’m talking about) for our next game day. Well I ended up trying a free one month trial of XBox live gold membership and now I’m completely hooked. I’m going to buy the Xbox from him and I’ve already got my own copy of Halo 3! My wife can hardly stand her excitement! (Yeah right, she’s definitely not a big fan of my new toy). If you ever run into Blackout8SIX playing Halo 3 online, that’s me.

M41-PG Potato Launcher

After a month and a half of work my potato gun is finally finished. I unveiled it at our recent monthly Halo day. It looks good and my friends thought so as well. The only problem is the stupid thing won’t fire! The BBQ igniter I used worked fine when I was test firing it. But when I test fired it I hooked it up to the short wires connected to the ignition chamber so the charge didn’t have to travel but a short distance. The design requires the trigger to be about two feet away from the ignition chamber. The screws in the ignition chamber had about a 1/4″ gap between them and they worked fine. Once the trigger was moved farther away from the chamber, the charge couldn’t jump that gap and so I had to make the screws so close they almost touched just to get the spark. Well the spark is now too small to ignite the hairspray. All that work and nothing to show for it but a replica of one of my favorite weapons from Halo 3.

I haven’t given up on it yet. I intend to find some other way to send a charge to the chamber. Or maybe use another fuel source that is finer than hairspray. I don’t know a lot about potato guns and don’t want to try something that could literally blow up in my face because the ignition chamber is right beside your head when you hold the M41-PG.

Hardcore Halo junkies can probably pick out the inconsistencies with my replica. Heck, I can. For starters the paint job is lacking in details like the decals on the launcher itself. The only decal I attempted was the SPNKr logo and you can’t see it from this side of the photo. I intended to do some more detail work but probably won’t unless I can get the thing to work. To make the potato gun look like the M41 I had to do a little cosmetic work. The potato gun barrel is actually 1″ pipe and the ignition chamber is 2″ pipe. But I had to cover the 1″ with 2″ to give it the right look. I could have used bigger pipe but that would make the replica way too big and its already huge.

Rampage

This post is for my Halo pals that congregate once a month to slaughter each other mercilessly in Halo 3. I’m not sure what to consider myself when it comes to the game. I’m definitely no pro. But I’m not a rookie either. I only get to play the game once a month. I don’t own it and so I don’t get to practice it inbetween meetings. During the course of the six hours on average that we play, my playing level varies between matches. I can totally rock and then totally suck. My favorite is to play what has been dubbed “half-life” because it takes less shots to kill an opponent. This somewhat levels the playing field for those of us that only play twelve times a year or less. I achieved a medal this past weekend that I’ll be proud of for some time. Playing half-life with Battle Rifles on Valhalla I collected the Rampage medal. That’s 20 kills in a row without dying. Oh yeah! They were all kills while sniping with the Battle Rifle. Bungie rates this medal’s difficulty a 9 out of 10. I don’t have many highlights to my Halo stats, so I think I’ll savor this one for a while.